Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely

This is a truly fantastic book. It's written by a Behavioral Economics professor and is all about the irrational idiosyncrasies of human nature. He explains dozens of fascinating experiments he conducted in which people consistently behave in ways that are "unexpected", at least from a rational viewpoint.

I initially heard of Dan Ariely by reading Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness, which cites some of his work. While Nudge was interesting, I think that this book has the interesting aspects of Nudge in far greater depth and lacks all of the boring parts. While the first chapter or two was largely a repeat of what I read in Nudge, the rest of the book really expanded on the ideas.

One of my favorite chapters was "The Cost of Social Norms: Why We Are Happy to Do Things but Not When We Are Paid to Do Them". In it, he claims that there are essentially two tracts by which we evaluate things- market norms and social norms. We are all social creatures and are happy to do favors. But if you put a price tag on that favor, we stop seeing the situation as social and we most certainly want to be paid what we're worth. Ariely performed an experiment in which he first asked students to perform repetitive, menial tasks for $.10, then for $.50. As typical market theory suggests, the $.50 group was motivated to work harder and performed more tasks. They then asked a group to do the same tasks as a favor, with no mention of a reward and that group worked the hardest and performed the greatest number of tasks. Which just shows the incredible motivational factor of social norms. He then introduced gifts in to the equation for the unpaid group- Snickers bars, Godiva chocolates, and nothing and found that all groups still performed quite highly and very similarly. Then he did the same, but referred to the gifts as a "fifty cent" Snicker bar and a "five dollar" box of chocolates. This language changed their motivation from a social arena to a market arena and their performance was reduced to what it had been at the cash level. I find this absolutely fascinating and totally believable.

I think that this chapter fascinated me so much because of my current work in Americorp. While I do get a menial living stipend, I am essentially a volunteer. I am operating on a social level. Many people who do Americorp end up in the non-profit sector and so the thought has been floating in my mind about whether or not that is something that I want to do in a year when my service is done. And in general I keep leaning towards probably not. This chapter completely explained why. When I think of working in the non-profit sector as a volunteer, it's social and I don't need real payment. If I were to think of it as a career, I don't think I would feel the same way. I would think of the market value of my time and skills and want to be paid accordingly. And I think that would mean not working in the non-profit arena. What can I say? I'm irrational- and predictably so. :)

Each chapter of this book presents equally fascinating and thought-provoking experiments. I could go on and on citing incredibly cool experiments that he performed, but you'd be better off just reading the book. It's pretty great.